We research and recommend products and services suitable for various business types, investing thousands of hours each year in this process. Martha spins her liberal arts degree in political economy into writing on diverse topics ranging from healthcare to tech with bylines in the San Francisco Examiner, Berkeleyside, The News Virginian, and the blog of Gladstone Institutes. A special interest in urbanism led to attending her fair share of neighborhood meetings on urban planning projects and co-hosting the first season of the Market Urbanism Podcast. In her spare time, she travels the country working remotely from campgrounds, coffee shops, and (friends’) couches.
Several industries are transitioning to permanent remote work, contributing to the transformation of the traditional workplace model. Companies will need to re-evaluate and innovate their company cultures to uphold morale and connectivity among distributed teams. The integration of regular virtual events, mentorship programs, and recognition systems will become paramount. Dell Technologies has embraced remote work as a permanent fixture of its corporate culture, leading the way in demonstrating how a hybrid workforce can be distributed globally. Meta has invested heavily in technology to foster collaboration and maintain a sense of community among remote workers. Meta has shifted its approach to a more flexible work model, allowing employees to work from home or in a hybrid manner depending on their preferences and roles.
Its 6,700-strong workforce includes in-person employees at printing plants in North America and Europe as well as distributed teams scattered across various finance, HR and product design departments in 15 countries. The trend skews towards technology firms, particularly startups, who are inherently tech-enabled, and have invested in their remote workforces. During the pandemic, for instance, Airbnb pivoted to a “Live and Work Anywhere” programme, which it’s retained to date. Online real estate marketplace Zillow switched to a permanent work-from-anywhere policy in 2020, subsequently announcing that it would pay the same wage to employees who moved away from its Seattle headquarters. Yet even as more firms issue hard-line return-to-office mandates and clamp down on employees working from home, there are some companies still steadfastly remaining – or even switching to – remote set-ups.
- Adobe Senior VP Ashley Still cited challenges like onboarding new interns who would be learning.
- However, remote companies say they are reaping their own set of distinct benefits.
- The company is fully remote and prides itself on transparency and structured async workflows, making it easy for new hires to understand how the company operates from day one.
- Change has been sweeping the corporate world, and several forward-thinking remote work companies have adjusted their strategies to adapt.
- Apple embraced remote work, but intends to limit most employees to no more than two remote days a week.
- MCP, an open-source standard, helps AI models generate more accurate and suitable responses to specific queries, and lets developers create bidirectional links between data sources and AI applications like chatbots.
Rethinking office utilization
Want to learn how remote teams around the world are making remote work more sustainable? Get started with Clockwise, an AI-powered calendar assistant that plans your ideal day, instantly surfaces the best times for meetings, and automatically protects your Focus Time. Upwork continues to operate two offices, but launched a remote-first approach in 2020. While retail locations continue to grow, Target relinquished one of its corporate office spaces. They promise “alternative office accommodations” for those employees, including remote-work and transfers to other brick-and-mortar offices. Slack opened most new roles to remote candidates while allowing current employees to work from home indefinitely.
OpenAI expects revenue to triple to $12.7 billion this year
OpenAI said in a post on X that it has launched its GPT-4.1 and GPT4.1 mini AI models in ChagGPT. OpenAI has unveiled o3-pro, an enhanced version of its o3, a reasoning model that the chatGPT maker launched earlier this year. O3-pro is available for ChatGPT and Team users and in the API, while Enterprise and Edu users will get access in the third week of June.
Transform the way your team works from anywhere.
But in the space of a few months, we have made 20 years’ progress in attitudes towards flexible working, and we are going to continue with this momentum,” said global head of human resources Emma Holden. “The tech conglomerate’s eventual goal is to have 70% of its workforce — about 23,000 people — work remotely for two or three days a week,” wrote CNN’s Kaorji Enjoji. “If our employees are in a role and situation that enables them to work from home and they want to continue to do so forever, we will make that happen,” said Twitter’s vice president of people, Jennifer Christie, in a statement to CNN Business. May 11, 2020″Nationwide plans to shrink from 20 physical offices pre-crisis, to just four,” Lee Clifford wrote in a Fortune interview with Nationwide CEO, Kirt Walker. Walker added, “We think the world is changing. We’ve got to take cost out of the system. We want to enable sustainable growth.” Since then, we update it monthly as notable companies announce their new remote work policies.
They’ve been remote for years and are especially attractive if you want a smaller, mission-driven company that values wellbeing and clear written communication. Zapier (automation platform) has long championed remote-first operations and helps other companies understand remote work via its blog and resources. They hire for a wide range of roles and emphasize async communication to reduce meeting overhead. GitLab is famous for publishing its entire playbook — processes, handbooks, and remote practices — publicly. The company is fully remote and prides itself on transparency and structured async workflows, making it easy for new hires to understand how the company operates from day one.
How to build writing skills for better job applications
And nonprofit organization Solana officially integrated the chatbot into its network with a ChatGPT plug-in geared toward end users to help onboard into the web3 space. Both the free version of ChatGPT and the paid ChatGPT Plus are regularly updated with new GPT models. Younger Gen Zers are embracing ChatGPT, for schoolwork, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center. In a follow-up to its 2023 poll on ChatGPT usage among young people, Pew asked ~1,400 U.S.-based teens ages 13 to 17 whether they’ve used ChatGPT for homework or other school-related assignments. Just over half of teens responding to the poll said they think it’s acceptable to use ChatGPT for researching new subjects.
Early in the pandemic, this software firm told employees they could work from home permanently. The company says its approach “empowers Atlassians to choose where, when and how they deliver their best work.” This biotech firm says it offers “a flexible workplace approach, based on lessons learned during the pandemic and employee feedback.” Many employees can “choose, with manager approval, to work fully remote from anywhere within their existing assigned country.” Arguably since the first agricultural revolution 10,000+ years ago, work has been tied to a fixed location. That location-based work – first a farm, then a manufacturing plant, then an office – created opportunity.
“It includes networking opportunities, where we encourage team members to meet in a collaborative space, introduce themselves and build their working relationships.” Pivoting to virtual work meant overhauling decades’ worth of in-person practices, says Flannigan. Yet there are also some companies – both multinational corporations and startups – still embracing remote employment.
- It’s a good idea to check in to ensure everyone companies moving to remote work permanently has what they need to be successful.
- Prompted by overwhelming employee sentiment, along with hiring challenges from the Trump administration’s immigration restrictions, Okta started shifting to a work remodel before COVID-19.
- This week, ChatGPT is on track to reach 700M weekly active users — up from 500M at the end of March and 4× since last year.
- Imagine a group chat with your coworkers featuring a Facebook-style news feed specific to your team and with features enabling lunch orders placed to food service.
- April 28, 2022″Today, we’re announcing that Airbnb employees can live and work anywhere…” CEO Brian Chesky said on Twitter.
OpenAI released GPT-5, calling it its “fastest” and “smartest” AI model to date. Based on internal evaluations, GPT-5 outperforms its predecessors in multiple areas, including math, coding, visual perception and health knowledge. It is now available to both paying and non-paying ChatGPT users, with usage limitations of course. However, it was labeled underwhelming by some users due its performance shortly after its release.
Business Finances
Creating virtual spaces for informal interactions, like digital coffee breaks or team-building activities, can also cultivate team spirit. By establishing clear expectations and providing the companies moving to remote work permanently necessary resources, organizations can collaborate effectively while allowing their employees the flexibility of remote work. In addition to thoughtfully evaluating your current workforce and deciphering what an effective remote-friendly business model looks like, it’s imperative company leaders and managers act with intention and prioritize culture. Dropbox has seen improved productivity since transitioning to a Virtual First workplace. In its latest employee survey, 78% of respondents said they’re more productive working in Virtual First, “which represents a double-digit increase since we implemented it,” the Dropbox spokesperson said. Cultivating a dynamic company culture remotely necessitates a dedicated effort to substitute the casual chats and unplanned interactions typical of a physical office.
ChatGPT helps users by giving recommendations, showing images, and reviewing products for online shopping
In the competition to develop advanced programming models, GPT-4.1 will rival AI models such as Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro, Anthropic’s Claude 3.7 Sonnet, and DeepSeek’s upgraded V3. Open AI introduced a new section called “library” to make it easier for users to create images on mobile and web platforms, per the company’s X post. OpenAI has rolled out a new system to monitor its AI reasoning models, o3 and o4 mini, for biological and chemical threats. The system is designed to prevent models from giving advice that could potentially lead to harmful attacks, as stated in OpenAI’s safety report. Questions have been raised regarding OpenAI’s transparency and procedures for testing models after a difference in benchmark outcomes was detected by first- and third-party benchmark results for the o3 AI model. OpenAI introduced o3 in December, stating that the model could solve approximately 25% of questions on FrontierMath, a difficult math problem set.
As a result, companies are redefining where work gets done and how success is measured and rewarded in a remote work environment. They are also under pressure from city-center and business park retail owners, commercial landlords, and other groups that have lost revenue due to the companies moving to remote work permanently change to a remote-first approach. Remote work is rising, and more companies are starting to offer permanent remote jobs and 4-day work weeks to their employees. This trend should continue in the future as more people want to work from home – which may be due to cheaper costs of living or an increased desire for a flexible lifestyle.
The Responses API effectively replaces OpenAI’s Assistants API, which the company plans to discontinue in the first half of 2026. OpenAI and Meta have separately engaged in discussions with Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries regarding potential collaborations to enhance their AI services in the country, per a report by The Information. Reliance has proposed selling OpenAI’s models to businesses in India through an application programming interface (API) so they can incorporate AI into their operations. Meta also plans to bolster its presence in India by constructing a large 3GW data center in Jamnagar, Gujarat. Researchers at Stanford University have observed that therapy chatbots powered by large language models can sometimes stigmatize people with mental health conditions or respond in ways that are inappropriate or could be harmful. While chatbots are “being used as companions, confidants, and therapists,” the study found “significant risks.”
It runs on the latest GPT-5 model, has app integrations, and can do web searches and deep research and even complete tasks autonomously for you, and more. I’ve covered the models and modes above, but here’s a reminder of all the core features (as of October 2025). Once you’ve chosen a model and even a mode or tool in ChatGPT, it’s time to finally ask something. Just type your question or request into the text box (or use the mic and speak).
OpenAI revealed that a small but significant portion of ChatGPT users, more than a million weekly, discuss mental health struggles, including suicidal thoughts, psychosis, or mania, with the AI. The company says it has improved ChatGPT’s responses by consulting more than 170 mental health experts to handle such conversations more appropriately than earlier versions. In 2025, OpenAI is battling the perception that it’s ceding ground in the AI race to Chinese rivals like DeepSeek. The company has been trying to shore up its relationship with Washington as it simultaneously pursues an ambitious data center project, and as it reportedly lays the groundwork for one of the largest funding rounds in history. The move came at the same time that the company slashed about 1,000 jobs this fall, with another 1,600 layoffs expected in early 2026. Despite being nearly six years past the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the debate over return-to-office wages on, colliding with ongoing efforts to cut costs, drive efficiencies with AI and navigate an uncertain economy.
